


pyrrhic in perspective

by asmilemingledwithwrath



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, u kno the usual run gang
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-14 11:01:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8011099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asmilemingledwithwrath/pseuds/asmilemingledwithwrath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's nothing glorious in this.<br/>Sometimes winning comes with a price. Sometimes, it's more of a price than one would expect.<br/>Drip power down your back, and someone has to come mop up the mess.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. ruins for the ruined

There is nothing.

Well, that’s not quite true.

There is, in fact, a whole lot of somethings – golden petals under their back, pollen brushing against their worn sweater; sunlight streaming from above, light and eager to pave the way to good intentions. Or was that hell? Oh well.

Better to be exact, then.

They _feel_ nothing.

Oh, to be sure, they could sense the way everything shifted. They were physically aware of the warmth, what little of it that managed to make it this far down the hole overhead. Emotions, though? That felt as distant as the fall which had landed them here once upon a time.

(Haha.

From far away, humour almost stirred to life. They think this might be funny.)

 

They sway to their feet, boots dragging with every step. They could walk normally, they think. They don’t. This feels easier.

Flower. Standing and listening to him feels easier, too. Maybe they should ignore him and keep going, but they don’t know what they would keep going _for_. What’s the next step in mind? They think they have one. They think they have quite a few.

He talks to them about the Underground, about love. (They want love, don’t they? Yes, they do, they _need_ some, they need all they can get, but—Love is gone. So much is gone.) He reaches out, engages them in battle; he’s looking for a human soul. He finds none.

That had been the only reason he had acted the role of the tutor, and there’s an immediate break in smile, a loss in character as he gazes across the green-and-black-and-white expanse to their nothing. He looks furious, then contemplative. There’s an obvious calculation in his gaze, and if even an idiot like _them_ can tell that, there’s a lot to say about how ill-concealed it is.

“Ha…” There’s a grin on his face, a grin in his throat. He looks like he knows something they don’t. They slowly tilt their head to the side, because they don’t know if that’s true or if he just _thinks_ that’s true. “I get it. You’re empty inside, aren’t you?

“Well, I can’t do anything with someone like _that_. Hee hee. So I’ll just leave you some advice, instead: down here, it’s kill or be killed. But you don’t even have what everyone wants, now do you?”

The implicit ‘useless’ hangs in the air like a noose, like a garrotte, like the sword of Damocles as he ducks into the dirt and the world fades from mostly monochrome to less so. Their mind nudges at them, because this seems almost funny too. A joke heard from far away. They already knew what the world was like. The fact that a flower felt like he needed to teach them it was almost worth mocking.

What truly is worth mocking is the way they pause for a second, waiting, waiting—

But nobody comes. Of course not.

They all but fall forwards, leaning precariously close to landing on the floor before their right foot slides forward to prop them up. Their left follows suit. A slow start for a slow child. They continue.

 

There’s a puzzle blocking their path.

[in my way in my way _in my way_ ]

They stare glassily at the door that refuses to budge, shifts their empty eyes to the buttons that they know is the key through.

They would feel stupid, but they feel nothing at all. They should know the solution. They wrack their hollow brain, knowing it’s buried somewhere in between every dormant synapse and fluttering nerve, and yet… How laughable. They can’t think of the sequence of steps they need.

They know it’s simple, they know it’s obvious. But everything is clogged and choked. They can do nothing but stare at the black angel insignia and purple slab keeping them out, waiting, waiting…

From the other side, the entrance to the Ruins opens.

Boss Monster. She’s obviously startled to find them right in front of where she had been planning to walk, fanged muzzle parting in surprise. Maybe if she was less composed, she would have bleated. But all she lets out is faint little huff of breath, what might be a gasp if they cock their head and listen hard. They don’t flinch over having nearly been stepped on, of robes rustling so close before moving back. (They used to. Now it’s a thing of the past. They don’t miss it.)

She surveys them, looks over the pollen and crushed petals dusting their palms and sweater. Peers gently at their impassive expression, their indifferent eyes.

“Ah!” When she speaks, her voice is warm like fire. They want to stick their hand in. “You are a human, are you not? You must have just fallen down. Welcome to the Underground, my child. I was about to tend to some gardening, but…”

Her gaze shifts to the side, wine red and hesitant in considering what information to divulge. Her pupils look like hearts. They wonder if she can spare one.

Haha.

Spare.

“I will look after the flowers later,” she decides. “Come with me; the Underground can be a dangerous place.”

They come with her. Nothing worth waiting for.

 

She’s expecting something. (Everyone is.)

She’ll be disappointed. (Everyone is.)

Dummy. They stand before the ghostly vessel in all its glory, pale yellow marred with stitches and stripes. No, that was another stitch.

She looks expectantly at them, stands where they need to go; waiting for them to do as she asked. Their fingers curl around nothing. This is pointless. They have nothing of value, even in death. No monster will care to fight them.

Easier to just show her.

Feet scrape themselves off the floor like roadkill, forced up with a shovel and shifted to the side. They begin the encounter, start the countdown to when she notices what they want as nothingness crawls up their vision and the dummy turns white from what they know better than to think is shock. (Wouldn’t be inappropriate, though.) Muzzily, they hear her quickly-stifled gasp.

Everyone in the vicinity can see that they have nothing to bring to the table. No heart. Nothing to attack. There’s that, at least. (Something tells them they deserve the pain, though. They agree.) The dummy looks like it’s about to fall over. They don’t wonder if there’s a why, just cast it a look and turn their gaze to the so-called instructor. They could play along. Could talk to it. Could kill it. Could run. They don’t want to.

They’re not sure what they want. Doesn’t matter.

“Oh, my _child,_ ” she says, in a voice aching with maternal concern that prickles their skin and clenches their teeth. “What could have possibly happened to you to make you this way? What are they _doing_ up there...?”

She looks at them like she wants to take them in her arms. They look at her like a sepulchral thing with too much nothing left in them to truly want. The closest is burning restlessness, coals under their feet.

They haul their heavy hand up, whiter in battle than it ever was usually dark, dig past ‘you won’, ‘you won’, ‘you won’ to the information they want. < H-O-M-E >

(They don’t have one. But it’s less letters than ‘surface.’)

She stops short in her tracks, expression looking like the prey that leapt into its burrow only to find the predator already inside. Jaw opens, eyes crinkles in something abjectly the antonym of delight – and then she swallows it all away, curves on a smile that’s as open wound as any they’ve ever seen.

“Well, I suppose you need not worry so much about the monsters around, then… Even if they attack, they will see the error of their ways-” [will see how worthless you are] “-and I am sure they will retreat in a jiffy. But know that if you need any additional help, I will still be here.”

She changed the subject. Their expression almost shifts, the faintest vestiges of something that can’t be anger drawing their eyebrows down, and they are about to start signing again but she has already turned away, walking briskly through the doorway she had blocked; as much an invitation as any.

Well. Okay.

Words drift over her shoulder again, but those aren’t important. They spare no backwards glances as they step front-ways, taking their empty shell out of the encounter. Better things to do. The dummy has no part in them.

(But really, neither did they.)

 

They follow her. Ivy. Path. Froggit. It all comes and goes.

Something nags at the back of their mind like something nags at the back of their heels, tenderly drags claws feather-light over the surface of their tangled-thorn thoughts. It whispers the reminder to something they are far too hollow to pay attention to otherwise.

LV 0.

Even the most harmless of creatures start at 1.

They do not think they like it.

Something is wrong with them. (But, this is not new. Something has _always_ been wrong with them.)

They wonder whether the indistinct amount of HP indicated that they had none of it, or all of it. They wonder which option would be better.

They could find out. Even without a soul, there’s still flesh on their bones, pain groaning in numb nerves. A sea stretches out before them – of spikes and of water both. A bridge of blades below. She is standing before it, considering; but they know. They have been moving slow. She knows no better. At their fastest, they would be run through [pierced prodded punctured pincushion, white stretches up into them and red stretches down out] before she could even so much as brush her claws against them.

Not as if the death would be permanent, anyway.

Still, their unsteady foal’s feet fail to fumble over to it, instead only keeping them barely upright. They could do it. No point. (Actually, there’s a lot of points. Oh, there are so many points sticking right up that the fact they even thought the phrase is making their brain echo with a cacophony of deafening amusement.)

Could stop. Should stop. They don’t. They just keep going – wound up and marching, tin traipse tapping. But they don’t know what drives them, anymore. There’s nothing waiting for them anywhere. There’s just the whisper in their lungs that forces them to expand and compress, the nails digging, squeezing into the heart they lost; all murmuring for them to _keep going, keep going_. So they do. Easier than resisting.

She takes them by the worn, weary hand, holds callused palms between soft pads and leads them through the puzzle. They don’t need to be babied, need anything as much as they want; they let her lead them along anyway. Warm. Careful. Old familiarity purrs at it, just a little.

 

The next ‘test’ is the easiest of all.

“Forgive me for this,” she says, as if this is the mother bird throwing the fledgling out of the nest. As if she doesn’t know they don’t care. Laughable. She leaves.

They walk. It’s what they now find second nature to do; step to the front, force tendons to move and curl and shift. They push at every leaden chain weighing them down with the grudging force they always have – simply without the incentive it once involved, because there’s nothing to be gained without a soul to hold it.

They still don’t know if this makes them a 20 or a 1. They feel like neither. They don’t feel like anything. It’s not the best measure of judgement. They know which one they want to be. (They’d try again, but they already know how it would end. Hadn’t that been what they just emerged out of, staggering from a smoggy cavern?)

Breathing is hard.

Living is hard.

Walking is almost easy.

It only gets easier when they know what their goal is. She steps out from behind the pillar, spouts ludicrous lies and pointless platitudes. They don’t care about her surprise pie. They don’t care if she thinks they’re good or not. They don’t care about a lot. Her opinion is included on that list. (Everything is, actually. But very much this.)

They stare until she gives them the phone, and then they stare some more. Her paws pad over the purple dirt, pass the purple bricks. There’s so much _purple_ in the Ruins. They hate purple.

They don’t bother putting the phone away yet, step out through to the hallway she had once again stopped blocking the way of. She calls, they receive. (To say they _answer_ is inaccurate.) Her light concern over the puzzles in their way is worthless in more ways than one. They would shrug at the phone if only she could see it. Instead, they choose to ignore the one-sided conversation she had conducted, threading onwards.

They ignore the monster. Lightly [haha], they rest their palm on the familiar warmth of the star instead. Last time, they had crunched contentedly through the leaves, ruled over this small domain with iron fist and iron claws. Now, such play was beyond them. There would be no games for them. (Something suggests this is more of a good thing, than anything. Okay.)

The Froggit tries to grasp their attention, croaking softly when it’s clear that they are not looking at anything in any case.

“ _Excuse me, human,_ ” it says. They drag their gaze to it the way others drag corpses. They wonder if they still count as human anymore. (Yes.) “ _It seems, from what my friend says, you have no soul. Human souls have such strength, if nothing else, so without it…_

“ _And yet… You are still walking. You have harmed no one. I think there is something worth celebrating about that. So, hurrah for you. I hope you continue to show your kindness to us monsters._ Ribbit.”

They say nothing. They do nothing. They watch it, still as a cat tracking a bird. It doesn’t know. It doesn’t know at all. They keep watching it, long after the monster has started shivering from slight discomfort and apprehension. Trusting fools, the lot of them.

They turn and tug themself down the hallway.

 

Puzzles. Ghost. Monsters. They already _know_ how the path goes.

The only difference is that the ghost doesn’t flee immediately. They stay and murmur, depressing in ways they no longer have to worry about.

The only difference is that the monsters less _attack_ as a whole and more simply _approach_. Change in intent or change in capability? Either way.

They push on.

Knife. Not a real one, of course. Here, the toy version leans on a balcony precariously. They think they might like to follow suit, except that would be pointless and resting here even briefly is pointless because they aren’t even tired anyway. (Or maybe they are, but not in a way that’s quantifiable. Not in a way that can be fixed. Eh.)

They look vacantly over the side. Below, a wide city that once held all of monsterkind yawns. It’s as deserted as them, now. Only one of the two has been caused by them.

They take the plastic excuse for a weapon that was once such a nice compartment of their game, and they keep walking.

The Ruins aren’t worth repeating. Home isn’t worth repeating.

They’re more or less clean, at least. They fall on the bed without the slightest twinge of guilt – not that they could feel that anyway, they were sure – and they lie there. Stomach pressed against the covers, face turned to the side, they listen to the steady sound of their own breaths tonelessly and think about nothing.

A plush toy looks back at them, creamy yellow. Beady button eyes gaze as meaninglessly as their own. They suppose that’s a bit like what they are, anyway. A soft squishy thing to hug and cuddle and ignore whenever convenient. To throw whenever you need to throw something. To squeeze when you need a stress ball.

Just a toy.

They turn their head to the other side.


	2. the conqueror in cadmean

When they wake up – and they must have slept, to wake up, but they remember none of it; no dreams, no slumber – there is a plate sitting pretty on the floor below.

They think about kicking it over, of knocking its contents onto the hard wood planes and stomping the carefully-crafted confectionery contents into mash under their shoe, grinding the crust into nothing edible at all.

She has no right to act like this. Like she cares. Liar. She doesn’t. They learnt that already – not that they had doubted it. They were good at dealing with people pretending they cared about them when they didn’t. They would be angry, they would be disgusted – but the emotions can’t even rear in their head, let alone churn in their stomach. They just feel like a gouged-out hole in reality. But they know the facts well enough, even without that.

Deliberately, they raise a set of covered toes and d r a g it across, smearing the butterscotch-cinnamon pie across clean plate and clean floorboards both.

Eyes impassive, they don’t bother trying to get the sweet substance on their sneaker off. They just leave the room. (Not theirs. No matter what she tries to say.)

She’s sitting in her armchair, when they approach. (She always is, if there’s nothing else to do. Always reading. Maybe she should have married the chair, if she loved it so much. Maybe they should have left her in it, the last time they had gone. Dearly departed, detained in death.

But monsters don’t deserve burials.)

“Ah, you are awake!” Sanguine [colour or emotion? yes] red eyes peer over small spectacles. She smiles, fangs flashing in the light dimness of the fireplace. “I hope you had a good nap. There is more pie in the kitchen, if you want it!”

They consider telling her that they smeared her baking onto her perfect pretty floor. They think about crossing the room just to splatter the rest at a wall, gobbets that might cling and stain and never wash out from the impact. Right where she can see it. All her love and care and work wasted, ruined, food left to rot out of what can’t be spite, but might be close enough anyway.

They don’t. Maybe there would be hollow satisfaction in it, but they don’t care – not about her, not about this. Not enough to actually bother. (There’s better to do. They know.)

Agonisingly, achingly, they force their limp hand to rise. As if pulling a dead weight, as if yanking on a ball and chain. They have [they are] both, anyway. It’s fitting.

They make the same words they did before. It’s closer to the surface; they only have to push past a plush and a pie for it. Less digging.

< H-O-M-E >, they show the signs to her one by one, and watch the realisation of what they’re saying dawn on her face like the brightening cloud of a nuclear apocalypse. (It’s just as devastating as one. But not for them.)

Quietly, she closes the book in her lap and places it on the arm rest. (Resting it on the arm rest! A fitting resting place! Distant humour howls like that’s the funniest thing they’ve ever heard.) They know what happens next – they don’t blink when she rises to her full height, horns jutting up almost gracefully above her head. The light curves on its edges when she does so; taking full advantage of its relatively meagre length. It could be intimidating. They already know how easily monsters bleed.

But then, instead of striding for the staircase sloping down below, instead of rapidly murmuring that she needed to do something [had she done that before she sat up? they don’t remember], neatly-trimmed claws filed carefully down into gentle edges rather than sharp points reach out and grasp their hand.

Dul[l]y bewildered, they allow her to lead them where she wants them to go. This isn’t part of the script. What is she trying to accomplish? Her magic can’t hurt something without a soul; there’s nothing for it to hit. (Maybe she’s planning on holding them at knifepoint. They wouldn’t put it past a monster to do that – for all that _she_ claims that she never wants to hurt them. She’s already proved otherwise a lifetime ago.)

When she speaks, still guiding them along footstep after pawstep, her voice is cold – and _this_ part, at least, they are familiar with. “You wish to return ‘home’, do you not?

“To do that, you must depart from the Ruins and trek through the Underground. You do not have a soul; perhaps the monsters would not hurt you, given that. But you are still a human. Out there… For some, it would not matter whether you had what they wanted.

“I have seen the same happen,” she continued, glaciers in her tone; and in her ancient, snowy grief, the thought occurred to them that they weren’t entirely sure monsters even died of old age. “To every human that has fallen here. They come. They leave. They die. Perhaps Asgore would not kill you. You cannot help his sick plan.

“But I am finished hoping upon nothing but slim chances for the possibility that my children-” [not yours not yours not yours they’re not anyone’s child and certainly not _hers_ ] “-will reach their happy ending. I will not allow you to gamble with your life.”

She leads them back to the room they had only just left, opens the door. Palm firmly resting on the flat of their back, she pushes them in. They can tell when she’s noticed the mess they made of the pie, the deliberate imprints of shoe in the smear, because her unyielding paw falters just slightly in its push. Her blunt claws twitch, threatening to curl into a fist— But then she continues, speaking as if she wasn’t affected at all.

“I am going to destroy the exit to the Ruins. No one will ever leave again. Be a good child and stay here. I am only doing what I must to protect you, do you understand?”

Finally, they’re far enough in the room for her hand to drop. They turn around. There is a key in her fingers, held between thumb and index and clasped between pink paw pads. With her other paw placed upon the doorknob – even without, really, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to deduce what was coming next – it was clear what her intention was.

She couldn’t fight them to a standstill, this time. She couldn’t hurt them at all.

So she would lock them away, instead.

 

It’s a lucky thing that they’ve never been a good child in the first place, in any case.

If there’s ever a time that called for them to spring into action, it was this one. Finally injecting forced lightness into their feet, rearing themself light and airy like what they had had to become to dodge so much so well, they tear their trump card out of their metaphorical sleeve and slam it onto the table. Before she can do much more than blink, they’ve elbowed her in the side and squeezed through the limited gap that brushing past frame and robe had afforded them, bursting out of the other side and racing with swift steps for the Ruins exit.

They all but slide down the staircase, feet tapping with alacrity ever-closer to the edge of the steps, threatening to stumble ass-over-end but never quite hitting it— And then they have to flee through the long corridor that lead up to it, bounding around curled corners for the door that she was so determined to seal away. The momentary surprise their heretofore undisplayed speed had afforded them could only give them so much of an advantage. She had a long stride and their body like this, like now, did not have the stamina it had once grown to give after battle after battle after battle.

Already, their breath is tearing itself in and out of their nostrils, heavy as a dying gasp and just as choking. Already, they can hear the distinct tap of claws _rapidly_ drumming on the dirt. If they close their eyes, they could envision themself as a fox with the dog on its scent. Seconds away from being torn to pieces, because there was no possible burrow for them to hide in and a canine was a hunter that, first and foremost, _endured_. A chase that it would never give up. A run that they could never afford to stop.

But when paws reach out to snatch at them, to try and stop them in their tracks, it’s still as light as it could be in the given situation. None of the claws threaten to dig in; not the pounce of a killer, but the scruff-grab of a mother. (Of course it is.)

They can’t stand it. A snarl on their face, twisting an apathetic expression into something feral and fierce and every bit the frightening thing that the monsters the humans feared ought to have been afraid of, they scream to a halt. They yank their wrist away from her, uncaring of how _that_ cuts their skin on the blunt tips with which she had previously been so careful in how she handled them. They _glare_ at her.

There’s no words for them to give, but their teeth take no effort to bare. (Maybe the heartless creature does have some emotion after all! They don’t know.)

She looks shocked, more than anything. Not hurt, not afraid – just terribly, terribly surprised to see their expression actually change. Just terribly, terribly sad. It should still be aloof. But she isn’t looking through them, right now. Oh no; she’s looking right at them.

“My child…” She begins speaking. They only bristle harder at the endearment. “Please understand. I do not want you to come to harm. You say you wish to return to your home, but… What kind of home is it, that would tear your soul away from you? I do not know what has become of the Surface anymore. If that is what awaits you… Surely it would be better to stay down here. We could be happy.”

They don’t understand. [they don’t understand a lot of things. just another one for the list.] Why isn’t she still trying to block them off? The ice has melted from her tone again, and they can’t even think of anything that could have prompted it. (The reaction, dummy. No one _normal_ does this.)

She takes a step closer. They would have taken a step back, once upon a time. Now, they just stand and stare. The fangs are picking themself one by one out of their not-heart, out of the yawning emptiness in their chest. They’re just waiting for her to get to the point, again.

“Given your circumstances, I have no doubt that you are strong enough to survive. You would have to be, to be able to even live through whatever awful thing that was done to you. You are responsive without the most important thing a being could have. I am sure you can survive the Underground. It may even be easier than what you’ve already been through.

“But, please… Go upstairs. Stay here with me. I promise I would take good care of you. Perhaps we would not have much, but… We could have a good life.”

They do nothing. They do not react. They barely even breathe – oh, they do, of course, because they’re still alive and they need it; but the rise and fall is shallow. They don’t let it be as rapid as it wants to be.

She makes a small noise in the back of her throat. They can’t decipher it. “Why are you making this so difficult? Go upstairs. Please.”

They look at her, fully dull-eyed once again. That return to listlessness seems to strike her as deep as any plastic blade, from her expression. Slowly, just once, they finally shake their head.

She chokes down a small, despairing chuckle. The laugh is familiar. “Ha. Ha ha… Pathetic, is it not? I cannot save even a single child; and you have already been failed when you needed saving the most.”

They tilt their head at that. (It’s not as if it had been anything but their fault that it had happened, after all.) She answers with a worn, wan smile.

“I understand if you dislike me. You have not had much of a say in this, have you? In anything. I have missed children so badly… But my expectations. My loneliness. My fear. For you, I will push them aside.

“Haha… Like the fussy old mother I am, I simply bustled over to you and adopted you as my own, did I not?”

At this, there is nothing for them to do but shift on their heels. Even if they had been in the mood to talk, they wouldn’t have known what to say to that. What was there to say? She had addressed what had been grating against their spine like a blade on a grindstone. No one had cared to do that before. So they do nothing.

“If you truly wish to leave these Ruins… I will not stop you.” Her smile droops even further. “However… Once you leave, I ask that you do not return. I hope you understand.”

They don’t know. They don’t understand a lot.

But they think they might, just a little. It makes them uncomfortable.

 

They walk.

Now that there’s once again no need to run, they’re once again more dead weight than living being, forcing themself forwards step by ragged step – and oh, there are a lot of ragged steps to take. Behind the exit to the Ruins, they remembered, the corridor had seemed to stretch on almost forever.

Now, lurching through it, the impression still refuses to fade; even while knowing there was an exit, and what will be waiting for them there. The purple lightens the further they trek, like the light at the end of the tunnel. (They’ve died too many times to expect a light at the finale of _their_ life.)

Their head lolls against their neck like it wants to come off. It’s as heavy as the world on their shoulders. They keep it bowed.

Eyes down, feet forward. Easier than raising it, because they can see the way forwards like this too – just without the need to stay even, stay upright, looking at things head-on when they don’t want to look at anything.

They don’t know what they want. They still don’t. They just move.

At the end of the road, brick stretches up to encompass the blackness beyond. From the doorway, they can see nothing but darkness. [black black yet more black the void is familiar in a way that is not kind and that is all that is waiting for them at the end]

They don’t have a soul. They don’t feel anything. And yet, even considering that… There is a certain hesitation to their steady gait, the determined drag pausing now where previously they had filled up all this vast empty space with the beat of their own walk, the unsteady scrape of their shoes.

But.

 _Keep going,_ that same urge within them whispers. Has whispered since they woke up without the desire to. Old habits die hard, don’t they? Maybe it’s not a surprise that killing their heart wasn’t enough to kill this. They step through to the next room.

If it can be called a room. Black cavern – small spot of sunlight.

Flower. Soaking up the paltry beams, sitting smiling sunny in the dirt. His grin is brighter than the weak light, for all the chuffing mockery in his condescending expression.

“Howdy! I have a question for you.” His petals rustle as he arranges them with a shift of his head, eyebrows sardonically lowered. “Do you think the world is fair, somehow? That if you don’t hurt anyone, you won’t be hurt back?

“Hee hee… But that can’t be right. You and I both know none of the monsters down here can hurt you. Not unless the naive fools start using a _real_ weapon. So what’s with you? Don’t you know the world is kill or be killed? Golly, it’s almost like you want to pretend you have some _compassion!_ ”

His face twists into a sick grin to rival a similar one, sharp teeth jutting out as black sclera flash at them. “ **But you can’t feel that.** You can’t love anyone, no matter how much you try. Miserable thing,” he spits, with a mean chuckle. “You should just stop trying. **No one** is going to make you care again.

“You took the SAVE file I used to have, you know. I wonder…

“How many times will you reset before you start burning the books?”

He cackles at that, expression alight with nothing but picturesque menace as he doubles over on his stem, rocking with humour. Another unfriendly leer, and he ducks out of sight.

They wonder if he truly felt the amusement. They wonder if he realises they’re fully aware of how hard he had tried to find his heart.

 

Monsters are all the same. Fools with fangs.

They move on.


End file.
